


Week 1:  A theory about Books 1 and 2  (Captive Prince meta)

by Mesa



Series: Five Weeks of Captive Prince Meta [1]
Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: M/M, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-10 08:27:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5578465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mesa/pseuds/Mesa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Book 3 of the Captive Prince series, King’s Rising, comes out on Feb 2, which is exactly 5 weeks from today.  As a bit of a personal challenge, and to keep myself entertained until the release date, I’m aiming to post meta about it each week until February 2. </p>
<p>Spoilers for Books 1 and 2, obviously.  Also, a word of caution to any CP fans who may find their way here via tags:  although I enjoy the series very much, and admire Freece’s work, I’m a strong proponent of the “if you like something, take it apart to see how it works” school of thought.  Sometimes I find more to admire, and sometimes I find details to question.  None of it is meant in any way to be negative or unpleasant, but it won’t always be joyful squee.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Week 1:  A theory about Books 1 and 2  (Captive Prince meta)

I’ll post specifically on the key question, _Does Laurent know?_ , next week. But what I’m leaning towards right now, in short, is that Freece changed her mind on this as she was writing the first two books. And this week I’m going to lead up to that by looking at other areas where I think she changed her mind over the course of the books.

I started reading _Captive Prince_ from the beginning, when Freece was posting it chapter by chapter on her LiveJournal. There were very long waits between chapters, and at the time I read each installment mainly for the UST between Damen and Laurent, not paying much attention to the plot – which is very complex and hard to follow when you’re reading a chapter every few months. So over the last week or so I’ve gone back and read the first two volumes straight through, this time trying to follow the intricacies of politics and plot.

In the past, I’ve written serialized fic myself, posting chapters weekly while I continued to write, and I recognize the unique challenges of trying to keep a developing story consistent with what you have already written and posted. It’s actually very difficult, even when you have the broad outlines of a story clearly identified in your head, and it’s a challenge that is specific to serialized posting. Personally, I now prefer to wait till an entire story is finished before I begin posting.

As far as I know, Freece didn’t have the story fully written when she began posting. That was part of the reason for the long gaps between chapters (the other reason I assume is that she is a very careful and precise writer, and also the chapters are very long). I do think she had many of the key plot points and general themes in mind, but I suspect that some elements changed as the story developed. Here are some of examples of changing story elements that struck me while I was re-reading the first two books.

### Nicaise

The first time we see Nicaise is in Chapter 2, where he is in the audience when Damen fights Govart. He is seen with Councillor Audin, and Damen is shocked to realize he is a pet, given his young age. At this point the boy is not named; he doesn’t get a name till Chapter 5. Here is how he first interacts with Damen and Laurent:

> _‘A fight like that—truly magnificent—but with no climax—allow me to offer him a pet, in place of his intended conquest. I think,’ said Audin, ‘that we are all eager to see him really perform.’_
> 
> _…The young boy was not the man’s son. He was a pet, not yet adolescent, with thin limbs and his growth spurt still far in his future. It was obvious that he was petrified of Damen. The little barrel of his chest was rising and falling rapidly. He was, at the oldest, fourteen. He looked more like twelve._
> 
> _…Objection came from an unexpected quarter. ‘I’m not a child.’ Sulkily. But when Damen looked incredulously at him, the boy promptly went white and looked terrified._
> 
> _Laurent was looking from Damen to the boy and back again. Frowning as if something didn’t make sense. Or wasn’t going his way. ‘_
> 
> _Why not?’ he said, abruptly._
> 
> _… Audin frowned and departed. His pet trotted after him, after an indecipherable look at Damen._

Of course we learn later that the boy is the Regent’s pet, not Councillor Audin’s. But here Audin is offering Nicaise to the barbarian slave to publicly rape. The Regent does not seem to be in attendance. It’s inconceivable to me that a councillor would offer up the Regent’s pet for obvious abuse without explicit direction or permission. That mystified me at first.

Then I noticed a couple of other details in this scene. First, Laurent does not seem at all averse to the idea of forcing Damen into raping Nicaise. But later we learn that Laurent is fond and protective of Nicaise, and that they have a kind of ongoing love/hate sibling-style relationship. Based on what we see later, it seems completely out of character for Laurent to even consider what Audin suggests.

And then look at the descriptions of Nicaise – petrified of Damen, white with terror, and “trotting” off after Audin. None of this seems at all consistent with the confident, spoiled, petulant, somewhat arrogant young boy we see later. Of course he has reason to be afraid of what Audin is suggesting with Damen, but the Nicaise we meet later would speak up if he didn’t want to do something, and would have no interest in being publicly raped by Damen.

By the time we see Nicaise next (still unnamed), in Chapter 4, he is standing behind the Regent’s throne, so I think by this time Freece has settled on a role for him. But in Chapter 2, I think he was just a random pet; his characterization and back-story were developed later.

### The Regent and Laurent

This one I have less definitive evidence for. But even though I was well aware, when I embarked on my re-read, of the implication that the Regent abused Laurent as a child, I completely forgot about it as I was reading the early Laurent/Regent scenes. It was only later that I remembered there was supposed to be that kind of history between them; nothing in their initial interaction suggested anything to me beyond the obvious antipathy of an ongoing power struggle – no suggestion of ambiguous feelings, latent desires, resentment or rejections. I went back and re-read with that in mind and still didn’t see any signs of buried history, really until the end of Chapter 7 when Damen observes, correctly, “ _Your life would be a lot easier if you stopped baiting him_ ”.

The characterization of the Regent as a serial pedophile may have been in Freece’s mind from the beginning, but I’m not quite sure the back-story between him and Laurent was. It might have developed gradually as she went along.

### Aimeric

In Chapter 15 of Book 2, Aimeric is revealed as a traitor to Laurent and a spy for the Regent. In Chapter 18, Laurent tells Jord that Aimeric used him for these purposes; later in the chapter, Laurent exposes Aimeric’s past relationship with the Regent, and Aimeric’s ongoing belief that the Regent still has feelings for him.

All of this is done very neatly – it moves the plot along, adds depth to the relationship between Jord and Aimeric, helps to define the Regent’s pattern of behaviour, and hints at Laurent’s own history with the Regent.

But it doesn’t fit, to me, with the Aimeric we see at the beginning of Book 2. In Chapter 1, he challenges one of the Regent’s Guard to a duel to defend Laurent’s honour. Afterwards, he and Damen speak:

> _Aimeric didn’t budge. ‘You couldn’t take a flogging like a man. You opened your mouth and squealed to the Regent. You laid hands on him. You spat on his reputation. Then you tried to escape, and he still intervened for you, because he’d never abandon a member of his household to the Regency. Not even someone like you.’_
> 
> _Damen had gone very still. He looked at the boy’s young, bloody face, and reminded himself that Aimeric had been willing to take a beating from three men in defence of his Prince’s honour. He’d call it misguided puppy love, except that he’d seen the glint of something similar in Jord, in Orlant, and even, in his own quiet way, in Paschal._
> 
> _Damen thought of the ivory and gold casing that held a creature duplicitous, self-serving and untrustworthy._
> 
> _‘You’re so loyal to him. Why is that?’_
> 
> _‘I’m not a turncoat Akielon dog,’ said Aimeric._

In Aimeric, Damen sees loyalty and even “puppy love” for Laurent. Yes, Aimeric could have been putting up a front, but his blind defence of Laurent (“he’d never abandon a member of his household to the Regency”) sounds real, and repeatedly provoking fights or challenges to defend Laurent seems a bit over the top for a spy trying to fit in. Damen compares Aimeric’s loyalty to that of Jord and Paschal. We know Damen is sometimes mistaken in questions of character, but is he so wrong here?

In Chapter 3, after yet another fight presumably prompted by Aimeric defending Laurent, the narrator seems to describe Aimeric in the same way Damen perceives him:

> _Aimeric, who showed everything on his face, was giving Laurent an open look of hero worship and mortification. It was clearly an agony to him that he was being brought to his Prince’s attention for an indiscretion._

I find it hard – impossible, really – to reconcile this portrait of Aimeric with the later depiction of him as the Regent’s mole all along. It could have worked if there hadn’t been so much insistence on his brash, youthful, artless admiration of Laurent. I’m also not completely convinced that Aimeric’s initial attraction to Jord was entirely calculated, if only because Damen predicts it to Laurent (“ _one day soon he’s going to stop making eyes at you and let one of the men fuck him,_ ”) and Damen is usually right about these things.

Again, I think, just a slight change in direction once Freece determined the role Aimeric needed to play, some time between Chapter 3 and Chapter 15. If the earlier chapters hadn’t already been published, it would have been easy enough for her to go back and make adjustments, but that’s the risk of serialization: no chance to tweak earlier parts when you want to.

### Slavefic

Plenty of readers have noted that the whole series starts out as “iddy slavefic” and then … very clearly shifts to something else. The “something else” is infinitely more complex and ambitious, and I admire Freece for taking it on, and on the whole I think it’s very successful. But the change in overall feel of the story is, to me, more evidence that she didn’t have the whole thing planned out in detail before she began posting.

 

* * *

  
To be clear, I’m not criticizing or complaining about any of this – I think it’s an interesting reflection of the challenges of serialization, and I find it fascinating to look at the ways the story grew. But I’m particularly interested in making a case for things changing over the course of the story because I want to suggest this helps to answer the question of whether Laurent knows Damen’s identity or not. That is what I’ll cover in next week’s installment!


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